Book Review – January 2023
Circumnavigating the city and then writing home had been on my mind ever since I’d encountered Iain Sinclair’s walk around the M25, London Orbital, which came out in 2002. But it was the Covid crisis that pushed it and the directive that for exercise citizens had to remain remain within the confines of their local authority. Stay Local. No border crossing. But what could that mean? Just how big was my local authority? How far out did it go and where did it end?
Peter Finch has been a ubiquitous figure on the Welsh literary scene for over forty years. As a writer he is best known for the Real Cardiff series of books but has also written about music, produces walking guides and is a published poet.
During the 2020 Covid lockdown Welsh government rules meant that none of us could travel outside the boundaries of our own local authority without good reason. Being a seasoned jobbing writer, Finch seized on this situation as the perfect opportunity for a new project, rather than worrying about it being a limitation on the walking trips that had become so much part of his writing process.
Peter Finch, like many of us who are psychogeography curious, read and was intrigued by Iain Sinclair’s London Orbital back in 2002. Sinclair wrote about a circular walk he completed around the outer edge of London following a route as close as possible to that of the M25 motorway. The walk revealed new aspects of the city and took Sinclair through unfamiliar liminal zones, each very different in character to the London that he thought he knew.
Finch, a life-long resident of Cardiff, felt that a similar journey around the border of his own city might result in new insights about it. Not just discoveries about the edges of Cardiff and the places where it butts up against neighbouring boroughs, but more general insights into the nature of borderlands.
His first task was to plot his route on a map, which he reports was no easy challenge. Inspired by Finch’s book, I tried today to draw up a walking route around the outer edge of my own local authority area and can confirm the difficulties with this process that he writes about. Other than the sections of Cardiff’s boundary where it follows a road, a river or the sea, transposing a line on an OS map to the reality on the ground is no mean feat; especially if, as Finch decided from the outset, you rule out knowingly trespassing on private property.
In very simple terms, Cardiff is bounded by the Vale of Glamorgan to the west and south-west, the M4 motorway and a range of hills to the north, wetlands and the boundary with Newport to the east and the Bristol Channel coastline to the south-east. Finch began his journey in the south-west corner of Cardiff and, in a series of walks, followed the city’s boundary in a clockwise fashion.
It was hard, writes Finch, to accurately follow the border as intended and he often found himself straying away from it. Either further into Cardiff or over the boundary into other council areas. He was surprised to find how rural much of the outer edge of the city was and, this being during lockdown, he encountered very few other walkers out and about.
Finch is a natural storyteller and he provides us with an engaging account of his journey. Cardiff is his territory and he knows it well. He fills in his descriptions of the places he passes through with episodes from the city’s history, tales of its characters as well as his own anecdotes. Like many cities, Cardiff has expanded rapidly over the years, particularly after the industrial revolution and the city’s role as the world’s busiest coal-exporting port.
Cardiff from The Garth
Cardiff has steadily absorbed villages and whole swathes of rural land, pushing its urban boundaries outward. As he walks, Finch observes scores of new housing developments, retail parks and industrial zones near the edge of the city: evidence of Cardiff’s ongoing expansion.
As a block of land Cardiff comes in at roughly 8 miles by 12. Following its borders on a map with a map wheel, including the long section of tidal mudflats to the south-east, Finch calculates that the border extends for just over 41 miles. His walk, with diversions around buildings and gardens, the occasional climb to a hilltop viewing point and for his meanderings when the route was not clear, totalled almost 73 miles.
With Edging the City, Finch has created a work that is not just a walking guide, but is an historic record of a particular time and place. He puts flesh on the narrative bones of his journey with the monochrome pictures and coloured maps he uses to illustrate his book. There are also links to useful online resources he has created.
This is a fascinating and informative book. It is also, perhaps, a source of inspiration for those of us who feel tempted to try something similar in our own area.
Peter Finch
Peter Finch is a poet, writer, performer, walker and literary entrepreneur living in Cardiff. He has been a publisher, organisation manager, periodical editor, event organiser, literary agent and literary promoter. He was at the forefront of the UK’s small press revolution in the 60s and the 70s with his magazine Second Aeon and pioneered performance poetry in Wales during the 1980s. From 1974 to 1995 he ran the Oriel Bookshop in Cardiff. From 1996 to 2011 he was Chief Executive of Yr Academi Gymreig / The Welsh Academy, an organisation which was later rebranded as Literature Wales. He specialises in books about the Welsh capital including the successful Real Cardiff series (4 volumes), Edging the Estuary and The Roots of Rock From Cardiff to Mississippi and Back. His latest books written alongside the work of photographer John Briggs are Walking the Valleys and Walking Cardiff.
Ooh this sounds great! I am not sure I could map around the what, Birmingham? West Midlands? I’d end up walking around all the hills, I guess. I want to get this book, though.
Thanks Liz. I enjoyed his writing. So much so that I will be seeking out some of his other books.